1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink set for use in ink-jet recording, which is particularly suitable for use in ink-jet recording, an ink-jet recording process, an ink cartridge, a recording unit and a recording apparatus.
2. Related Background Art
An ink-jet recording method is a method that recording is conducted by applying energy to an ink to eject minute droplets of the ink from a nozzle, thereby applying the ink to a recording medium such as paper.
In recent years, the size of an ink droplet ejected from a single nozzle has come to be made smaller for providing an ink-jet recorded image corresponding to an ink-jet recorded image of extremely high quality at silver salt photograph level. Ink-jet printers, the amount of an ink droplet ejected from which is 10 pl (picoliters) or smaller, are currently marketed. With respect to recording speed as well, still more speeding-up is required. Attending on this requirement, it is of urgent necessity for printers to meet a higher drive frequency.
Ink-jet recorded images have recently been required to have not only high definition, but also far excellent fastness properties (light fastness and the like). Therefore, colorants are going to be changed from dyes to pigments. For example, a recording liquid containing an aqueous medium comprising a pigment, a polymer dispersant and a nonionic surfactant is proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 56-147871. It is also proposed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,221,334 and 5,085,698 to use, as a dispersant for pigments, a block copolymer having a hydrophilic segment and a hydrophobic segment.